


The Price of Envy

by ultimateparadox



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Baby Keith (Voltron), Child Death, F/M, Miscarriage, Poisoning, Pregnancy, Unsafe Sex, baby fever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 18:49:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15669138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultimateparadox/pseuds/ultimateparadox
Summary: Krolia desperately wants to be a mother.





	The Price of Envy

**Author's Note:**

> Hey. If you've got baby or pregnancy related traumas, please approach with caution. I didn't go into extreme detail but it's still prevalent!

Krolia fears she is barren. 

The Blades of Marmora are a constantly shifting force in terms of population. Some years they lose more soldiers than they recruit, and other years it is the opposite. Krolia deeply wishes to bring forth a new Blade, born and bred to denounce and defeat the Galra Empire. They will be strong and sharp, agile and smart, and carry the future with them. She will not be alive long enough to obtain universal freedom, and her spawn unlikely to be as well, but the passage of luxite will one day lead there.

At first Krolia tries with other Blades. She's sat on more than a couple of cocks to produce a child, but each knot ends in failure. Medical screens tell her again and again that she is without child, and her heart grows heavy.

On planetside missions, her desperation sometimes overpowers her. Even half, her child will be Galra enough for the Blade of Marmora to accept. These couplings are always desperate on both sides, where Krolia wants to be pregnant, and her local partner only wishes to fuck out adrenaline. 

Krolia is no stranger to sex. Krolia is no stranger to reproductive failure. Krolia is no stranger to strangling, devastating despair.

There are two other operatives that Krolia sees in the medical wing fairly often. Dosya was injured cycles ago and receives a supplement to keep her well, though she has retired to armory management and maintenance rather than infiltration. The other is Soth, who supports Krolia because she understands on a very intimate level exactly what is troubling her. They are both unable to conceive for some reason or other, and the tests on their fertility always come back inconclusive while the tests for pregnancy always come back miserably negative. 

One day, Soth rushes into the training room, distracting Krolia from her opponent and Antok grapples her to toss across the room. The bitterness of the definitive loss fades quickly when Soth delivers the news that Dosya is pregnant.

It is a joyous occasion throughout the Blade. Soth drags Krolia to see her Dosya personally, and she hasn't seen her smile so brightly since before her injury. Her partner looks proud beside her. Krolia congratulates her friend, cheers with the whole lot of them, and ignores the venomous jealousy pulsing behind her eyes. 

Months later, Dosya is confined to the medical wing. Krolia is there with Soth that day, rubbing her fingers across her knuckles, because Soth is once again not pregnant. News finds that the supplement Dosya has to take is reacting badly with the pregnancy, and the decision to be made is whether Dosya continues with her medicine and loses the infant, or the medicine is flushed from her system and Dosya herself becomes at risk. 

They stop the treatment, but time shows that it doesn't care. A little after Dosya is clear of the supplement, something inside of her goes wrong, and suddenly she is bleeding. She loses the baby. She doesn't talk to anyone afterwards. Krolia never sees her again.

It's the first time Krolia second guesses her desire for a child.

More time passes, almost two years, and Krolia returns from a mission to see Soth at the hangar, waiting to greet her. Her stomach is tellingly round. Krolia's overwhelming joy battles with her painful sorrow, but she is sincere in her congratulations all the same. 

She thinks of Dosya several times during Soth's pregnancy. She never brings her up.

Soth gives birth to a lovely baby girl, with big ears and big lungs. For all the support and encouragement they've shared over the years, Krolia is named the Secondary Mother and it is a great honor that nearly brings her to her knees. 

In two years, safety protocols in the hanger will change. It's two years too late, because little Therrin goes missing one day. Soth is inconsolable. They find her later, in the inner workings of a ship that was open for repairs, on its way to R&D. She'd tasted a secretion of some kind of coolant, a pure toxic substance, and Soth roars her grief and it echoes in the ears and minds of every Blade on base. It never leaves them.

Motherhood is becoming something scary. Krolia has dreams where she's happily swollen and then suddenly her thighs and sheets are bloodstained. She always makes sure her ships are in impeccable shape before and after she uses them, their innards sealed tight. 

Krolia is sent on mission. Espionage is something she is good at. Work is a welcome distraction, makes her concentrate on the mission rather than her wavering desires. Time and loss is souring her on the subject, and her sex drive has dropped to an all time low. The imperial soldiers that she spies on are handsy sometimes, cozy and close, but Krolia has not been receptive.

She is a spy, trusted by the Blade of Marmora and the Commander she has tricked. So she goes on patrols, searching for Lions that are ten thousand years lost. It's just her luck that they finally pick up on the location of one, making her responsible for ensuring the Empire never, ever finds it. She succeeds, blasting her fellow patrol out of existence, but her ship has taken enough damage that a crash through this great blue planet's atmosphere is inevitable. 

It's there on Earth that she meets him, a rough native man called a human. It's he who pulls her from her ship's crushed and broken wreckage, it's he who flails on the ground when she throws him to the sand, demanding his compliance. It's he who shows admirable compassion when he shelters her in his tiny home, treats her wounds, tells her everything he can over a warm, steeped drink that she waits for him to drink first. 

He's a kind man. He agrees to help her in any capacity even before Krolia has finished explaining the outer world to him; he says he can see the bigger picture, and is fully willing to defend his planet. He explains he has a hobby of reconstructing local vehicles, and his eyes are so full of life when he gets Krolia's permission to test his expertise on her ship. She explains the small crystal systems, and that the coolants are deadly. He asks her how old she thinks he is to want to drink a foreign fuel source. Krolia thinks of Soth and Therrin and does not answer.

While the man learns about intergalactic technology and applies his mechanical know-how, Krolia extracts her scanner and disappears into the desert for hours. The man always makes her wear a too-large hat he calls his Trusty Trucker Cap, a desert nature guide wherein he's circled dangerous Earth animals in bright red ink, and a dingy aluminum canteen full of fresh water. The heat is foreign and makes her light coat of fur sit uncomfortable on her skin, but she perseveres. She must find the Voltron Lion.

Depending on how far she's gone, she sometimes returns to the man's home a day or two after she's left. He always worries when she's gone too long, but she tells him about the fascinating cave systems in the desert's canyons and rock faces with even tones until he relaxes. Krolia has entrusted this man with enough information to get him killed by not only the Empire but also the Blade if they find out he knows anything at all, but he still worries more for her. It's strange, but not disliked. It strikes a warmth beneath her breast.

Progress is slow. However, progress is also rewarding.

He can repair her ship, with enough time. There's too many parts humankind hasn't even dreamed of developing, so he has to learn. She watches him use his new knowledge in his own mechanical wants, and even laughs when the little cruiser he calls a hoverbike outperforms his projections, the delight on his face contagious. On her end, Krolia has discovered heavy energy readings in the caves, seen ancient carvings on the walls. The man gave her a camera, once, and when he looks at the images she took on the tiny screen he says they look like lions.

She takes him with her on the day she finds the Blue Lion of Voltron. The beast is mythical and ginormous. The blue coloring is chipping a little at its hard edges, but it looks regal like all the stories say. A particle barrier of particular strength shields it from all and any, a smooth force field that keeps them both away, warm to the touch. 

Still, giddiness fills her. The legend is real, and she's found it, and with this man's help she will guard it. The man seems to think she's discouraged, because how will she contact her leaders, but she is anything but. The Blade is resourceful, but so is her man, and if he can learn how their ships piece together from the ruins of hers, then together they can get a message back to base. 

Triumph is ecstasy in her veins, and when they return to the homely little shack in the desert, Krolia lets her happiness and hope shine. She pulls his dusty leggings down his legs and he peels her suit down to her ankles. Her useless womb means nothing to her in that moment, riding high on success and pleasure, his cock wonderful against her walls. 

Since their first coupling, they have steadily become a partnered pair, and intercourse happens often in the following weeks. She loves when he smiles at her in the morning after, and he likes it when she drags him bodily from the inner mechanisms of his cruiser to roll in the packed dirt. They both have their responsibilities; he reports to work every day in the closest city, doing hero's work. Krolia spends time among the caves, watchful of intruders. By day's end they return home, and on his days off she is lenient with her vigil. He calls those days dates, and she falls in love with the human practice.

She falls in love with him.

Krolia contracts an unknown illness. Her stomach is upset often, leaving her sweaty and vomiting. They can't bring her to a doctor—her man is kind, but human beings are generally cruel to what is different, so he says, and he can't be sure she'll be safe in outside hands. Worry leaves him pale when he looks at her.

Until one day he looks at her and his eyes widen. Krolia had sprinted from the bed early that morning to puke up bile in the commode, and he'd followed her in distress. He asks her if she noticed. Confusion answers him, and he directs her attention down to her stomach, where something is changed.

The swell of her stomach brings her to tears. She screams at him for his magic sperm, hugs him close before he gets the wrong idea. This is a miracle baby, and she tells him so. She presses a fierce, toothy kiss to his stubbly chin, murmurs about probability. She feels queasy with pregnancy's sickness, but she also feels absolution in the tiny bump beneath her hands. 

After the surprise wears off and her partner has hurried to the city to buy as many books on human pregnancy as he can, fear trickles into her heart. Krolia has seen failed pregnancies in Dosya, has seen the agony of a mother's loss in Soth, and worries. The child will be half species that has no idea how they interface with Galra, if the baby will be birthed healthy and whole, or birthed alive at all. Her wretched luck has brought her a gift wrapped in uncertainty, and alone in their bed she trembles. There are no gods that Galra pray to, but she pleas that should one exist, it would help her and the life she carries.

The only snare in the entire duration of Krolia's pregnancy isn't one that even has to do with her or the child, shockingly enough. Her partner comes back home late, smelling like smoke and destruction, his hands wrapped with bandages soaked in a cooling gel. He took her yelling in stride, knows she's frightened of being left alone to handle the pregnancy on her own, and the night ends with her gentle kisses to his bandages, while he smooths his hands over her belly.

Childbirth, many long, tiring months later, is excruciating. They are alone in the home, and there is blood and tears and the whole place reeks of fear and sweat. Labor is hours long as her body prepares to push the little infant out. Yet, after the long labor, the birth comes very fast. It leaves her core and canal sore, but the shrieking cry of a baby fills the shack and Krolia breathes out her tension. Her miracle son is born, and she's so tired and so elated.

He looks human. According to her man and the books he'd read to her night after night, he looks perfectly healthy. He can nurse properly on her teat and he has all his little extremities, and her man is crying, calling her beautiful, calling him beautiful. In the gory mess of birth, atop some thrift store blankets and towels in the tiny bathroom of the shack, she hardly believes she's beautiful, but their son is the most beautiful thing she's seen in the entire universe.

Childbirth is painful, Krolia acknowledges. But two Galra scouts appear on Earth, and Krolia realizes that the most painful thing to her is the knowledge that she can't stay. Her man is injured, her baby is young. She's needed in space, to complete the mission with the Blade, to put her skills into deterring and stealing from the Empire. If she stays here, she cannot protect them. Her partner almost died helping her, and he promises to uphold her protection of the Blue Lion when she tells him she has to return, his eyes sad and his arm covered in bandages. With her love for them trapped in her ribcage, she knows that her desperation in producing an heir for her blade was the foolish desire of a young Galra warrior, but not that of a heartbroken mother. Keith, her baby boy, will be safe on Earth with his father, and she will stop any Galra from setting another foot on their planet, from the greenest of foot soldiers to Emperor Zarkon himself. 

She will end this war in her lifetime. She will not let the future rest on her son's tiny shoulders. She will destroy the Empire or die trying, because Voltron is real, because her family is counting on her.


End file.
